CHAPTER 6

Sophia's POV

His mouth was warm.

That was the first thing my brain registered as stupid. Not the three hundred people watching. Not Marcus standing two feet away looking like someone had detonated a bomb in his chest. Not Dominic somewhere behind me radiating the specific fury of a man whose plan had just been set on fire.

Just that Damien's mouth was warm.

Then my brain caught up and I pulled back.

Damien let me. But his hands stayed on my waist, and his eyes stayed on Marcus, and the look on his face was the kind that ended conversations permanently.

The room was completely silent. I could hear cameras. I could hear whispering. I could feel the math being done in real time by 300 people, and I was going to have to live with whatever answer they reached.

"We're leaving," Dominic said. Not a suggestion.

The limo ride back was its own kind of disaster.

Dominic looked at Damien. Damien looked out the window.

"Care to explain?" Dominic said.

"He had his hand on her."

"So you kissed her."

"It worked."

"You created a scandal that will be on every platform in this city before we reach the estate." Dominic's jaw was tight. "I had a plan, Damien. You set it on fire."

"Your plan had her standing next to you like a decorative object. She's untouchable."

"My way, she's a headline."

"Better a headline than a handprint on her wrist."

Dominic went quiet.

I looked at my wrist. There was a faint mark where Marcus had grabbed me. I hadn't mentioned it. Damien had noticed anyway.

My phone started buzzing in my clutch. I pulled it out. Notifications are flooding in faster than the screen can load them. A photo is already everywhere. Us. In the ballroom. The kiss caught at exactly the right angle to look like the most deliberate thing in the world.

Forty thousand impressions. Six minutes.

Then I found a post that made my stomach drop.

Breaking: Insider claims Sophia Chen-Vale was having an affair with Damien Black DURING the marriage. Sources say this is why Marcus filed. Photos to follow.

"Dominic," I said.

"I see it." He didn't look up. "Marcus was ready with a counter-narrative in under ten minutes. He was prepared for this." He looked at Damien. "He wasn't there to get her back. He was there to bait you."

Damien's jaw tightened. "And I walked straight into it."

"Yes," Dominic said simply. "You did."

Back at the estate, Dominic disappeared immediately, already three steps ahead, already rebuilding. I took off my heels and went to the kitchen because that was apparently where I went when things were terrible.

Damien followed.

He stood across the counter and looked at me with an expression I hadn't seen on him yet.

"I'm sorry," he said. Like the words were unfamiliar in his mouth. "For kissing you without asking. I saw his hand on you, and I stopped thinking."

I looked at him for a moment.

"The kiss was a lot," I said. "But the part where you told him to let me go. That part I'm keeping."

Something shifted in his face.

Then his phone buzzed. He looked at it and immediately called someone.

"Elijah. Pull everything Marcus Vale filed in the city court today. All of it. Right now."

He hung up and looked at me.

"Sit down," he said.

"I'm fine."

"Sophia."

I sat down.

His phone buzzed again. He read it, and his face went completely blank. The kind of blank that meant something had landed that required every available resource just to process.

"What did he file?" I said.

"He's not filing for divorce," Damien said. "He already did that." He put the phone down. "He's filing for the rights to your parents' estate."

I stared at him. "My parents had nothing. They died when I was nineteen."

"According to what Elijah just pulled, that's not true." He looked at me carefully. "They had significant assets. Tied up in a private trust. The named beneficiary was listed as your husband."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"He knew before we got married," I said. Not a question. The knowledge was coming in slowly. "He married me for it."

Damien said nothing.

Three years. Three years of giving up everything, believing I was loved. Three years of being told I was lucky, that I was nothing before Marcus, that I owed everything to the Vale name.

The whole time.

"How much," I said.

Damien looked at his phone. Then at me. "Enough that he can't afford to let you walk away with it."

I sat very still.

They hadn't just thrown me away. They had been making sure I had nothing left to fight with when I found out the truth.

"Sophia," Damien said.

He had moved around the counter at some point and was standing beside me now.

"You're not going to lose it," he said. "Whatever they're planning."

"You don't know that."

"I know what we can do to Marcus Vale in a courtroom when we're motivated." Something moved in his face. "We're motivated."

I looked at him, and my face did what it had been trying to do for the last ten minutes. Not crying. Just the expression underneath crying. The one that came when something was too big, and your face stopped pretending.

Damien watched me.

He didn't hand me whiskey and call me pathetic.

He just reached out and put his hand over mine on the counter.

Warm. Steady. Certain.

I sat there in that kitchen at midnight with the ruins of everything and one very complicated man's hand over mine and thought that the universe had a very sick sense of humor.

But at least I wasn't at the bus stop anymore.